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This is a post about the second half of my Tiffany Aching read! I continue to be really glad I read all four books as close together as I could; it definitely makes me appreciate the themes he's working with over the course of the four books more.

I actually remember being shocked when I read Wintersmith for the first time that the book revolved so much around a sort-of-romance. Not that he doesn't write romance at all, it's just I can't think of another Terry Pratchett book where someone crushing on someone else is an actual plot driver as opposed to a character sidenote. Angua/Carrot and Verence/Magrat (for example) are long-running and important to the world and to the characters, but those romances inform the plot, they don't cause it.

- no, actually, I'm wrong, Susan's crush on Buddy in Soul Music does in fact trigger plot. So maybe this is a thing that Terry Pratchett considers relevant when writing about teenaged girls? I mean, I'm not complaining, it is relevant to most teenaged girls, and it's certainly not the only thing going on in Tiffany's life in this book (or in Susan's in any). Or maybe Pterry just felt that the time had come to write the obligatory Supernatural Creature In Love With My Teenaged Heroine book, with the usual Discworld twist of everyone being very pragmatic and long-suffering about it. Anyway, as far as my actual thoughts go, I love the continuity of the community-of-women plot (Tiffany rallying the teen witches to help Annagramma!) though I do wish Spring had gotten a more dignified portrayal to fit with the sympathy with which we see the Wintersmith. I also liked that Roland got his own plotline and character growth . . .

. . . though that did make it feel extra weird to me when his character got completely derailed in I Shall Wear Midnight. ( I'm going to spoiler-cut the rest of this since lots of people I think haven't read it yet. )